Restoring Forests and Improving Livelihoods in Nepal: Four Decades of Community Forestry

This book presents a comprehensive review of new research and practice-based insights from Nepal’s four decades of community forestry development, delving into when and how community-based management can lead to forest landscape restoration and equitable livelihoods.

With over four decades of formal program history, Nepal’s community forestry is a rare case from the Global South showcasing the trajectories and outcomes of a community-based environmental management initiative. It offers historically proven lessons of what it takes to restore degraded forests in a way that empowers local communities to make decisions. The book showcases research and experiential insights of those who became part of Nepal’s community forestry movement from the early years to the current stage. Tracing stories of change from the era of ＂Himalayan degradation＂ in the 1970s to the globally hailed success of community forestry in the 2000s, the book demonstrates how the policy, political economy, and changing community dynamics have shaped the everyday practice of community forestry and its contribution to livelihoods and forest restoration. It reveals how small-scale work in the early years evolved into a complex system of community forestry, exposing the challenges associated with social exclusion, resource management, and policy environment. As such, it makes an important contribution to the global knowledge on community-driven forest landscape restoration in the Global South where forest ecosystems are inseparable from the everyday life and livelihoods of local communities.

This book will be of great interest to students, scholars, and practitioners working on forest restoration and conservation, community development, environmental policy and planning, and sustainable development more widely.

Hemant Ojha is an Associate Professor at Australian National University and the Principal Advisor of Global Development at the Institute for Study and Development Worldwide (IFSD), Australia.

Krishna K. Shrestha is Professor of Global Development at the University of New South Wales, Australia.

Naya S Paudel is a Senior Researcher and former Executive Coordinator at ForestAction Nepal.

Rahul Karki is an Executive Coordinator at ForestAction Nepal, a Kathmandu based forestry research institution.

Dil Khatri is an Executive Director and Senior Researcher at the Southasia Institute of Advanced Studies (SIAS), a Kathmandu based policy research organization.

Sony Baral is Associate Professor at Tribhuwan University, Nepal and Executive Director of The Resource Nepal, a non-profit organization dedicated to building a sustainable future for Nepal and its citizens.

Mani Ram Banjade is a researcher at ForestAction Nepal. He holds a PhD in environmental governance and development studies from the Australian National University.

Ian Nuberg is Senior Lecturer at the University of Adelaide, Australia. He is also the leader of the ten year EnLiFT project researching the improvement of livelihoods through agroforestry and community forestry in Nepal.